Samsung Sitges Cocoon is composed of 27 virtual reality pieces

Alexandre Aja and Robert Englund will be presenting Campfire Creepers: The Skull of Sam, the latest VR work by the French filmmaker

A total of 27 pieces from all over the world make up this year’s Samsung Sitges Cocoon and can be seen free of charge at the two venues set up at the Festival. Among them, Talismán, the world premiere of the short film directed by Carlos Therón and starring Berto Romero. In addition, and for the very first time, a special jury composed of Jaume Balagueró and Javier Olivares, among others, will decide what the best VR experience will be from among the 18 pieces that will be competing, which will also be eligible for the People’s Choice Award via virtual voting.

Two is the number of venues that will be set up at this 50th anniversary edition of the Sitges Festival for the public to be able to enjoy the best virtual reality with Samsung Gear VR technology: the Samsung VR Experience Tent located in front of the Hotel Meliá Sitges; and the Samsung VR Cinema, an innovative synchronized virtual reality movie theater for up to 25 people, located in the Sitges Miramar Cultural Center, and where the 18 in competition pieces will be screened, for the first time, in the Samsung Sitges Cocoon section.

Kickoff will be next October 6th at 18:00 at the Miramar Cultural Center itself, where the section will be officially inaugurated and will be presenting as a world premiere, the virtual reality short film shot in 360º Talismán, directed by Carlos Therón and starring Berto Romero, which intends to submerge viewers in a terrifying story full of mystery. Thanks to the Samsung Gear VR virtual reality glasses, the audience will be able to experience, with maximum thrills, this story of three construction worker who are renovating an old house, where they discover a strange object, similar to a talisman, hidden behind a wall and they decide to remove it from its hiding place. Very soon, the talisman will begin to exercise its power and our heroes will discover the macabre story of the family that owns the building.

Some of the most outstanding virtual reality pieces at this year’s Samsung Sitges Cocoon will be Campfire Creepers: The Skull of Sam, by French director Alexandre Aja and starring Robert Englund, the first virtual reality horror series with 360º vision, and that revolves around the urban legends explained around a summer campfire, and that can be seen for the first time at Sitges 2017; Night, Night, by Guy Shelmerdine, a terrifying experience about childhood fears in the form of macabre clowns; the Korean An Obituary by Jean Yoon where a funeral becomes a genuine nightmare, Reawakening Memories by Young-kap Kim, and Bloodless by Gina Kim, one of the recent winners in the virtual reality section at the Venice Festival; The Argos File from the United States, where the viewer will become a memory investigator and will solve murders; the Italian short Dreams of Blue by Valentina Paggiarin that explores the universe of virtual reality; the amusing new work from Troma with its Toxic Avenger in Heart of Fartness; I Saw the Future, by Frenchman François Vautier, a sort of essay about the arrival of the digital revolution; the Spanish short Portal; or also from the United States Melita by Nicolás Alcalá and Ray by Rafael Pavón, a modern fairytale. And also the noteworthy new VR experience created by Pablo Lara and Rafael Pavón bases on the series The Ministry of Time, The Ministry of Time VR: Save Time, a ten minute piece that will be presented at the Festival.

Of the 27 VR experiences that viewers will be offered free of charge, 18 of them make up the official in competition selection of this year’s Samsung Sitges Cocoon. A jury, composed of director Jaume Balagueró, the creator of the series The Ministry of Time, Javier Olivares and content director Miguel Ángel Ruiz, will decide which it the best short film made in virtual reality at this Sitges 2017. In addition, the attending public at the Miramar Cultural Center, via their virtual vote, will be able to decide what their favorite experience was and present one of the pieces with the People’s Choice Award.

On the other hand, in the Samsung VR Experience Tent located in front of the Hotel Meliá Sitges, which viewers can also access free of charge and choose the audiovisual content they want to see, they’ll be able to enjoy six uninterrupted experiences each more terrifying than the next. Joining the previously mentioned Talismán, Campfire Creepers, The Ministry of Time and Night Night, are two shorts very eagerly awaited by fans: on the one hand, the VR experience of Annabelle: Creation, where we are transported to Bee’s haunted doll house; and on the other, Death Note VR Experience, a short film where viewers can become Light Turner himself and take on shinigami Ryuk face to face.

With a spectacular lineup and first class guests like Alexandre Aja, Robert Englund, Carlos Therón or Berto Romero, the Sitges Festival once again banks on the future of new technologies in the audiovisual field and renews its agreement with Samsung, the company that is sponsoring the Sitges-International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia for the second year in a row.